The Sweet Chestnut is sometimes referred to as Spanish Chestnut or in many countries its just a Chestnut tree. It is not native to the UK but is pretty common in the South of England. That said, we have worked on a great many of these magnificent old trees here in Scotland, mostly on farms and country estates.
They get very wide with huge branches but, like old Oaks can get stag headed and need to be dead wooded and pruned to keep them in top condition. A very impressive tree when mature, there are some really good ones in the forest planted as far back as Mary Queen of Scots time at Melville Castle near Dalkeith.
They live around 600 years in the wild but can achieve 1,000 if cultivated. Although only distantly related to the Horse Chestnut, the Sweet Chestnut looks a bit like a posh version of it. Horse Chestnuts have hand shaped leaves but the Sweet Chestnut leaves (single leaves but in a hand shaped clump) are jaggy and maybe a bit bigger and greener, and they both grow nuts but Sweet Chestnuts are edible (they make all sorts from them in France) but conkers (Horse Chestnut nuts) contain a poisonous chemical unless you are a wild boar.
Sweet Chestnut wood uses
We prefer using wood from pruning rather than felling but if a Sweet Chestnut has to be removed or the wind blows one over we make the very most from as much of the timber as possible. You can't really buy Sweet Chestnut timber in Scotland anyway unless it's from another tree service so it doesn't come up very often but when one does they are usually so big that the timber salvage is substantial.
The wood is very durable and can be used in ground contact. In the South of England where growing conditions are a bit better Sweet Chestnuts are actively coppiced to produce poles. The high level of tannins make even young wood rot resistant. This attribute makes the timber good for fence posts and landscaping products, we would not tend to cut sleepers and posts from Sweet Chestnut we get in because you can use more common species for that such as Larch and Douglas fir and maybe low grade Oak.
With Sweet Chestnut we concentrate on milling boards for building and making furniture with the smaller sections cut to make craft pieces.
With the branches and bigger off cuts we will produce firewood logs, cooking and smoking fuel and charcoal. It makes excellent charcoal and has been used for this purpose for thousands of years. As a firewood it takes as long as Oak to dry, it's like the hardwood version of Larch being a good dense fuel but can be a bit spitty so not ideally suited to open fires but great in a stove.
Sweet Chestnut is also an excellent wood for smoking meat and cooking pizza with its sweet, nutty aroma and high density, long high temperature burn. It's a good all rounder and can be mixed with other species if you find it a bit sweet.
They use it in Italy for cooking pizza, we think that should be good enough for anybody!
Valuable to wildlife
The flowers and nuts are a source of pollen and food for lots of insects and animals and if you look carefully at the image above you will see a red squirrel we photographed (badly on a phone) while climbing a Sweet Chestnut to prune it.
